The invention relates generally to the installation and/or assembly of equipment.
In a variety of industrial, commercial, medical, and research contexts, various pieces of equipment may be employed to accomplish or facilitate the work being performed at a facility. In many instances, the equipment may consist of many parts or for various other reasons may require extensive on site-assembly and installation. For example, in a medical context, an imaging device, such as a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system, may be shipped from the manufacturer as many parts which are assembled and installed on-site. Such installations are typically performed by highly trained technicians and may be very time consuming. In particular, an installation procedure may involve much wasted movement and looking for parts. Furthermore, such installations may be difficult to stage, schedule, and monitor. As a result, the trained technician may spend unnecessary time performing installation procedures.
Because the number of technicians trained to assemble and install a complex piece of equipment, such as a medical imaging system, may be limited, it may be desirable to facilitate or ease the assembly and installation process. However, additional assembly at the manufacturing site may be infeasible due to shipping size constraints or to the fragility of the system in transit. Likewise, the use of less skilled technicians or lay people to perform the assembly and installation may be infeasible due to the complexity of such systems and the risk of damage or improper assembly to what is usually expensive equipment. A technique for streamlining the assembly and installation of complex systems or devices is, therefore, desirable.